Cremins to retire as Georgia Tech coach

ATLANTA (AP) -- Bobby Cremins will retire after the season, having coached Georgia Tech to national prominence and then presided over its collapse the last four seasons. <br><br>The 52-year-old coach

Saturday, February 19th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

ATLANTA (AP) -- Bobby Cremins will retire after the season, having coached Georgia Tech to national prominence and then presided over its collapse the last four seasons.

The 52-year-old coach has been at Georgia Tech since 1981,taking the Yellow Jackets to the Final Four in 1990. But Georgia Tech has not played in the NCAA tournament since 1996. "Bobby Cremins is synonymous with Georgia Tech basketball, "athletic director Dave Braine said at a news conference today. "If it weren't for the success of our basketball program from the mid-1980s throughout the early 1990s, it would have been hard to keep our athletics program afloat."

No announcement was made about his successor. At the beginning of the year, the silver-haired coach from New York had told Braine he would resign if Georgia Tech, featuring a frontline of 7-foot Jason Collier and 6-11 shot-blocker Alvin Jones, did not make the tournament this season.

Tech has fallen to 11-13 overall and 3-8 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Yellow Jackets, who have lost their last two games by a combined 41 points to No. 3 Duke and No. 22 Maryland, are idle until Monday night, when they play at Florida State.

Under Cremins, Tech has had 10 NCAA appearances, four ACC titles and countless stars, including Kenny Anderson, Mark Price, Tom Hammonds and Stephon Marbury. But the last four seasons have not been good ones, going only 18-41 in the ACC since 1996, the one year Marbury played before entering the NBA early.

Braine, who replaced Cremins' good friend Homer Rice after the 1997 season, was unhappy with the direction of the program. The two men met after Tech was knocked out of the NIT Tournament last season, finishing 15-16.

When Cremins came to Tech in 1981, he took over a program that was coming off a 4-23 season and had lost 27 of 28 ACC games since joining the conference. By Cremins' fourth year, the Yellow Jackets were ACC champions and en route to a string of nine consecutive invitations to the NCAA tournament. National TV appearances, sellout crowds and a knack for landing a top recruit every year became Tech trademarks.

Cremins nearly left Georgia Tech in 1993, actually accepting an offer from South Carolina, his alma mater. But, after 48 hours, he returned to Atlanta, admitting he made a mistake and wanted to finish his career with the Yellow Jackets.

Things were never the same. Tech's NCAA streak came to an end in 1994, and the Yellow Jackets were overlooked again the following year. Tech made it tothe round of 16 in 1996 in Marbury's only season, but fell to 9-18 the following season.

Tech was 6-10 in the ACC the last two seasons, but Cremins felt this could be the season for a comeback. But the season seemed to fall apart in December after the Yellow Jackets lost three in a row to Michigan, Georgia and Stanford by a total of eight points.